#865: There Is Nothing Either Good or Bad, But Thinking Makes It So – Examining the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstones List

If you’ve met me, firstly I apologise, and secondly it’ll come as no surprise that I have a tendency to ruminate on that which many others pass over without so much as a backward glance. Previously this resulted in me writing something in the region of 25,000 words on the Knox Decalogue, and today I’m going to turn my eye upon the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstones list. Prepare thyself…

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In GAD We Trust – Episode 23: What’s in a Watson? [w’ Caroline Crampton]

The companion of the fictional detective — the “stupid friend” as Ronald Knox styled them — is something I have spent far too long thinking about, mainly because the protoype is always taken to be Sherlock Holmes’ chronicler Dr. John H. Watson. Joining me this week to discuss why that might not always be a good comparison to draw is Caroline Crampton of the superb Shedunnit podcast.

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#635: A Taste for Honey (1941) by H.F. Heard

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It’s difficult to know where to begin with A Taste for Honey (1941), the first of three ‘Mr. Mycroft’ novels by H.F. Heard.  The core conceit is delightfully barmy — I shall avoid naming it in this review to preserve it for the curious — and played with an impressively straight face, but beyond that there’s really only a short story’s worth of content here, spread thinly over 189 generously-margined pages.  With only one plot-line, only really three characters, and nothing to widen the universe or engage the mind in any meaningful way past the halfway point (when the ending will already be painfully obvious to anyone), this really is just a latter-day Holmes pastiche with verbal diarrhoea.

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#458: The Sleek Interpreters – Bringing the Young Holmes Brothers to Life in Mycroft and Sherlock (2018) by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse

Mycroft and Sherlock
Three years ago, when The Invisible Event was but a callow youth, I happened upon a Sherlock Holmes-universe novel co-written by someone who shared their name with NBA Hall-of-Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.  “Wow,” I thought, “that guy must hear the same thing all the time…” — and then it turned out that it actually was NBA Hall-of-Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and, well, I became even more interested.

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